HOME MEDIA SERVER
What is Jellyfin?
Jellyfin is self-hosted media-server software. It organises your own films, TV, music and other media and streams them to supported clients without requiring a commercial media subscription.
Direct play is the easy path
If the client can play the media file exactly as it is stored, the server mostly reads and sends the file. That is called direct play and it keeps the server workload relatively light.
Transcoding is the expensive path
If a client cannot handle the original codec, resolution, bitrate or subtitle format, Jellyfin may transcode the media. That means decoding and re-encoding video on the fly, which can be very demanding on a CPU.
Why hardware acceleration matters
Jellyfin can use supported Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, Apple and Rockchip hardware to accelerate video transcoding. The exact method depends on operating system and hardware, and not every stage of every transcode is accelerated.
What hardware do you need?
Jellyfin's current hardware guide recommends around 8 GB RAM for an average deployment, or 4 GB for a Linux server without a GUI. It also recommends fast local SSD space for the operating system, Jellyfin data and transcoding cache. The media itself can live on much larger storage.
Start by testing your actual clients
If your TV, browser, phone or streaming box can direct-play most of your library, the server may need far less compute than a setup that transcodes every stream.
Can you run it on a mini PC?
Yes, and Jellyfin currently highlights modern Intel low-power platforms among its suitable low-power choices. The key is the integrated media engine and codec support, not just CPU benchmark scores.
Can you run it on a Raspberry Pi?
Jellyfin's current documentation specifically warns that Raspberry Pi hardware acceleration support is not a strong fit, especially for Pi 5, which lacks hardware encoders. A Pi may still work for limited direct-play use, but it is not the obvious choice for a transcoding server.
Go deeper
- What hardware does Jellyfin need?
- Jellyfin vs Plex
- How to build a home media server
- Media server storage calculator
Next: what hardware does Jellyfin need? or use the media server storage calculator.